Martha
by Princess Pinky
Summary: What would've happened if Nine had met Martha instead of Rose when the Nestene Consciousness invaded Earth?
1. Chapter One

**A/N: **This is an idea I've had for a while now, but I've just been too lazy to finish. I'm a long time fan and writer of AUs and rewrites and after beginning to read **Web of Obsidian**'s _An Awful Lot of Running to Do_ (a post-"The Doctor's Daughter" series rewrite with Jenny), it reinvigorated my will to work on this again. I'm not doing a series rewrite or anything like that, it's just a "what if?" rewrite of "Rose," where Nine meets Martha instead of Rose. It was inspired by my belief that Rose was just in the right place at the right time and if he'd met Martha instead of Rose, he would've "fallen" for Martha instead. (Note that I don't actually ship Doctor/Martha in any incarnation though.)

_**Martha**_

**Chapter One**

There was a steady buzz like handful of bees beneath a cotton blanket. It alternated between the buzz and silence several times before a silhouette sat up in the shadows. The dark outline of a slender arm groped around on the shadows and soon a bluish-white light flicked on, emanating from a small square screen. The light revealed the ghostly, mostly oval shaped face of young woman with a sharp, flat-bottomed chin. "Hel—lo?" she asked, yawning halfway through the words.

"Martha?" a worried voice answered. "We've been trying to call you all night! Are you okay?"

Martha yawned again. "Fine," she said sleepily. "What time is it anyway?"

"Three in the morning!"

Martha grunted. "I fell asleep studying again. Sorry, Tish. Tell Mum and Leo I'm sorry too."

"Martha, you can't keep on like this, you're going to make yourself sick!"

"More time in the hospital then," Martha smirked. "I gotta go, Tish."

"I can come pick you up."

"It's three in the morning," Martha reminded her. "I'll be fine, I just need to find the coffee pot, that's all. Bye!" She hung up before the voice on the other end of the line could put up a protest. Martha lifted her arms into the air, stretched, and then thrust her legs out and batted the soles of her boots against the floor. After her muscles were sufficiently stretched, she flipped open her cellular again and flashed it around the room until she spotted the light switch on the wall and followed a path with her cell backlight to make sure she didn't topple over anything.

A harsh fluorescent light cascaded the room like a sudden onset downpour. Martha yelped and covered her eyes with her arm, only occasionally peeking out until her eyes had adjusted themselves to the new amount of light in the med school break room. Martha blinked a few times and let her arm drop back to her side. She glided over to the coffee pot, which was lined with less than an inch of black brew. Bits of grinds had settled at the bottom.

Swiftly, she tossed it into the sink, squeezed in a splash of lemon Dawn, and got to work on scrubbing out the lines inside the glass. By the time she was through the pot had a crystal shine and she fixed it under the coffee pot, tossed the cold filter full of old grinds, gave it a rinse, and set the machine for a new brew. As she waited, she returned to the couch that she'd woken up on and found her med school notes crumpled and a few even torn from where she'd fallen asleep on them. Groaning, she gathered them up and tapped them on the arm of the couch in an attempt to align them in some semblance of order.

Martha collapsed against the cushions and set the pile in her lap. On top was a printout of a skeletal human hand. Little lines extended from specific parts of the bones. Martha randomly pointed to one and traced it down to the part of the bone it was attached to. "Carpal bones," she said. "Proximal row: scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, p-p–" Her voice drained off and she slapped the paper in frustration. When she still couldn't remember, she flipped it over and on the reverse was the same picture, with the answers filled in. "Pisiform." She smacked her forehead with her palm. "I am never going to pass my exams."

Ten minutes later she was heading out the door with a fresh Styrofoam cup in hand. Martha held the cup below her chin so when the steam wafted out it would warm the pours of her chocolate colored skin. It felt soothing on her way to the lift. When the doors opened she was surprised to find a fellow classmate, Julia Swales, inside. "You're still here?"

"You're one to talk," Julia replied with a knowing grin. She was just a couple inches taller than Martha, with long onyx hair that was currently pulled into a ponytail. Julia was a foreign exchange student from India and she'd formed a sistership with Martha beginning at orientation. "Cramming?"

Martha held up her stack of study notes as she stepped into the elevator. "Always."

Julia wrinkled her nose. "Me too," she sighed. "I was just on my way up to nine," she indicated the flashing floor numbers on the lift, "to leave this week's lottery money with Rita. And then I'm off to the break room for a nap."

Martha shook her head. "I'll never understand you lot and the lottery," she said. "Med school costs enough without wasting some more each week on the lottery."

"Well we can't all have your parents," Julia countered.

Martha pressed her lips together. She'd done her part with scholarships, but Julia was right: her parents had been instrumental in helping her make her way through med school financially and she was thankful for how blessed she'd been for their help; not everyone had it as good as she did. If she hadn't had their help, it would've made tuition even more valuable, which was why she couldn't see the point in gambling it away with the probability that they'd never see any return on it.

Still, it wasn't something that Martha wanted to argue about, so when the lift dinged again and Julia moved to step out, Martha grabbed her friend by the shoulder. "You know, I could take it to Rita if you want. I'm already on my way out anyway. What do you say?"

Julia clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Tempting, but what's with the sudden change of mind?"

"You just look exhausted. I should know, because that was how I looked around midnight when I hit the break room to study."

Julia exhaled. "Okay." She dug out the plastic bag with the lottery money from her purse and handed it to Martha. "Thanks, Martha."

"Sure. Where do I drop it off?"

"Nine-o'-nine."

Martha stepped out of the lift and waved adieu as the doors shut. She began to creep down the halls which were oddly quiet. The ninth floor was primarily used for dummy and mannequin training. As Martha passed down the halls she peered through the class windows: there were mannequins positioned in various ways on the beds or operating tables. A mother and infant mannequins were inside a faux maternity ward, while another mannequin was lying on a stretcher in a room set up for surgery training.

The door to Martha's destination was closed, but _0909_ was visible on the plaque outside the door. Martha reached for the handle and opened it, but the room was empty save for a prop skeleton in the corner. "Rita?" No answer. "Rita?" she called again, a little louder. Still, nothing. Martha ventured inside, looked around, and then made her way over to the skeleton. She lifted its hand by the bony wrist and took a long look at the bones. "Pisiform. Scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, and pisiform," she said, touching each bone. "Now if I could only remember that all the time."

She turned away and headed for the door. A faint scrape against the edge of her wrist caused her to stop and turned around. The skeleton was rocking a little on its stand but it seemed too far away for her to have accidentally bumped it. However, given that there was no one else in the room – and she was dead tired on top of it – she dismissed it as a trick of her imagination. "Rita!" she hollered as she stepped back out of the room. "Rita, it's Martha! I've come with the lottery for Julia, she said you'd be up here!"

Martha paused in the hallway, but it was as silent as snow falling in the night. She was quickly beginning to regret her offer to take the lottery up in the first place. "Maybe she's in the loo?" she asked herself, quickly turning on her heel in the direction of the restrooms. But a noise from down the hall – the direction she'd just come from – gave her pause. She looked back over her shoulder. "Hello? Rita, is that you?"

Martha hurried down the way she'd just come, puzzled by the fact that she hadn't seen anyone the first go. After she passed 0909, there was a scraping sound, followed by a reverberating thud and a crash that sounded like a ton of pencils hitting a tile floor all at the same time. She whirled around, but still, nobody was in the hallway. "Who's there?!" she demanded. "If someone's playing some kind of joke, it isn't funny!"

Suddenly a door handle two doors down from Martha twisted. Martha started and immediately her hand moved to her chest before she realized the door was opening. "Rita," she said, then stopped when a face with long, hay textured brown hair emerged from behind the door. The face was yellow, Jaundiced, and _shiny_. Worse still was what the face was connected to, a long yellowed neck and then…an exposed chest cavity and abdomen from the collarbone down to crotch. All of the vital organs were visible in shades of tan, salmon, and burgundy within the hole. They were also just as shiny as the Jaundiced skin.

Martha knew the face well, it belonged to Ana. The only problem was, Ana wasn't human, Ana was a mannequin. Specifically, an anatomical mannequin, hence her name, without removable body parts. She was used as a study tool and she definitely was _not_ mobile. "Ha ha, very funny!" Martha yelled. "But you can stop now! I don't know how you got Ana moving, but good on you. Great prank. Now can you show yourself, because it's after three in the morning and I need to _go_."

But Ana didn't stop moving. Instead, she continued to move towards Martha, slowly stretching out both of her arms.

Martha scampered backwards. She could feel her heart rate increasing and the adrenaline fueling her veins.

The door to 0909 opened as well and there was a sound like tap dancing shoes on a hard floor. Then the skeleton who had been hanging inside walked out. Its jaw opened and shut, perfectly mimicking the sound of real teeth, then its skull moved on its spine and its empty eye sockets seemed to set on Martha. It pointed a single skeletal index finger at her and began to step towards forward, making a clanking sound each time one of its bones hit the waxed floor.

Before she knew it, Martha had backed up against the far wall. There was no way to go except for into one of the rooms on either side of her and even at that, she'd be trapped because neither room went anywhere. Still, she figured it might buy her some time if she could at least lock herself in a room, so she made a grab at one of the handles. But before she could turn it, it turned in her hand. Martha yelped in surprise and let the handle go. The door swung open and she was expecting another mannequin, but was instead confronted with a man. A beat of hope pumped through her, until she remembered that neither of them had any place to go. "Who the hell are you?!"

The man looked from Martha to the slow advancing mannequins and then removed a small metal stick with a blue gem-like nod from the inner pocket of his black leather jacket. He pointed it at the mannequins and began to wave it up and down. The blue node began to glow and a buzzing sound, like the vibrator on Martha's cell phone, began to hum from it. Ana and the skeleton began to raise their arms, as if shielding themselves, and then the man grabbed Martha by the hand. _"Run!"_

Martha didn't need to be told twice. Her feet dashed as soon as she was given the word and she ducked between Ana and the skeleton along with her mysterious compatriot. As she did, the skeleton reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder. Martha whirled around and grabbed its skeletal wrist, giving it a good firm yank. There was a cracking sound and the wrist broke off in Martha's hand. She felt the man tug on her hand and continued running, picking up the pace because she refused to let him drag her along.

A minute later they'd reached the lift and the man waved his metal wand at the buttons. There was noise down the hall, presumably the mannequins, which was growing louder with each passing second. Finally the lift dinged and the doors opened. The man stepped inside with Martha on his heels and pointed his noisy tool at the doors again. They shut and the elevator began to drop down the shaft.

"Giving me a _hand_ back there," Martha said, "nice trick." She slapped him on the back with the skeleton hand. "Pat on the back for you. Now, who put you up to it, hm?"

"Why would someone have put me up to anything?"

"Because med school mannequins don't just start up and walking around the halls trying to scare students. So who put you up to it? Was it Rita? Did you mean to prank Julia? Because I'm not Julia."

"Julia?"

"Indian woman," Martha replied. "Do I look Indian to you?" She held up her arm, flashing him the back of her hand.

"Nope."

Frustrated and getting nowhere, she decided to change tactics. "Who are you then?"

The doors to the lift opened and the man stepped out. He turned to the panel on the wall. "Hold on, mind your eyes," he said, pushing Martha away. He turned to the button again and waved the blue light on the tip of his wand against it. The wand buzzed and then an explosion popped, followed by a small mushroom cloud of smoke. The doors stayed open as he started to walk away.

"You're not getting away that quickly!" Martha scolded as she ran after him. "You are _going_ to tell me what's going on here!"

"They're plastic, living plastic creatures, and they're being controlled by a relay device on the roof which would be a great big problem if I didn't have _this_." He produced a black box with a timer stuck to it with strips of thick red tape.

Martha narrowed her eyes. "Is that a – _bomb_?"

"Yes, very good!" He said sarcastically before grabbing Martha and pushing her in front of him, towards an exit door in what appeared to be a basement. "Now I'm going to go upstairs and blow them up. I might well die in the process, but no, don't worry about me, no. Go on, go home! Go have your lovely beans on toast." He shoved her out the door. "And don't tell anyone about this, because if you do, you'll get them killed."

Martha shoved the skeletal hand into the door jamb as he tried to close it. "Are you telling me you're some kind of terrorist?"

"If you like!"

"Well I don't!" she yelled. "And I don't believe you either! If you were some kind of terrorist, then why did you save me?"

"Good question. Let me know when you've thought of a good answer. Or better yet, _don't_. You're wasting my time!"

"Too bad! There are people still in there, real people just like you and I who need to get out! My friend, Julia, for one! I'm not just going to sit back and let those – those 'living plastics' get to them! Or let _you_ blow them up!"

The man looked between Martha and the basement of the med school. He grit his teeth. "Fine!" he yelled. "Where's the nearest fire alarm?"

"I – I don't know!"

"A lot of help you are!"

Martha shoved the door open and pushed past him, running back into the basement. She looked around frantically until she spotted a cherry colored fire alarm switch on the wall and rushed over to yank it down. Alarms rang out through the basement, so ear piercingly that she had to throw her hands over her ears.

"You've done your good deed now," the man said, coming up behind her. "Now off you go!" He suddenly picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her back to the exit door where he set her down and promptly slammed the door before she could argue.

Martha stared at the door in one part shock and two parts contempt. She noticed the skeletal hand on the floor by the door, from where it had fallen after she'd used it to stop the man from closing the door in her face. She picked it up, though she wasn't really sure why. Suddenly the door opened again and she jumped back, barely avoiding getting struck in the face.

"I'm The Doctor, by the way. What's your name?"

"Martha." Martha narrowed her eyes. "And a doctor? I've never seen you around here before, Dr. Who?"

"Just The Doctor, that's more than you need to know. Now, Martha, _run for your life!_" He slammed the door again.

Martha reached for the door and tried it, but it was firmly shut. She could still hear the alarms blaring inside, as well as the sound of firetrucks in the distance. Although she still had no idea what was going on, she began to run. It had worked well enough for her the first time, so she decided that it was reasonable enough to assume that it would be worth it again. When she got around to the front of the medical school, she saw a large group of people in the parking lot and a few stragglers still running out from the building. She spotted Julia in the crowd and ran to her.

"Martha!" Julia breathed. "Thank goodness you're all right!"

"I was going to say the same about you."

"Is Rita with you?"

Martha shook her head. "I never found Rita, the ninth floor was…" She bit her lip, remembering what the man – _The Doctor_ – had said about telling anyone anything. She wasn't sure why she should trust him, but some part of her did; perhaps because he'd saved her life. "…empty." Her stomach felt wibbly at the lie, but she hurried to expand on it. "When I heard the alarms I just got out as soon as I could."

As the firetrucks descended on the parking lot, there was a massive explosion from the roof. Fire and debris began to rain down from the school and all of the civilians took off running, including Martha. She only stopped when they'd gotten to the other end of the parking lot, far enough so that they no longer felt the heat of the explosion. She watched as fire licked against the night sky from the top of the building like a raging Chinese dragon, spurring firefighters into action to put out the blaze.

Julia covered her mouth. "I can't believe this," she whispered.

Martha wrapped her arms around her friend's shoulders. Police sirens screeched against the sound of the city and Martha waited, never noticing the words _Police Public Call Box_ painted onto the top of a large blue box parked just across the street in the mouth of a dark alley.


	2. Chapter Two

**A/N: **I'm so happy to see there's some interest in this story. Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays/Winter Break. (By the way, this chapter is a little bit shorter than the previous chapter. Sorry about that. It just sort of naturally felt into place that way. I tried to reorganize, but it felt forced.)

_**Martha**_

**Chapter Two**

"The whole of central London has been closed off as police investigate the fire. Early reports indicate–"

The television snapped off with a pop in response to Martha aiming the remote at it. She was propped up against two pillows in bed, not at all ready to face the morning, let alone the calls from her family that she knew were due to begin pouring in again at any moment.

"Yes, Mum, I know it's all over the news. No, Mum, you don't need to change your flight, I'm already here with her and she's fine, the paramedics gave everyone a clean bill of health last night." Tish walked into the room with her cell phone pressed to her ear. "Well of course I'd let you talk to her, but –" she looked pointedly at her sister "–she's sleeping right now and after last night, it's probably best she gets her rest, don't you think? Yes, I'll have her call you as soon as she's up, I promise."

Martha mouthed, 'Thank you.'

Tish nodded. "I love you too. Goodbye." She hung up and set her phone onto the dresser, then flopped down on the end of the bed beside Martha. "So, how are you _really_?"

"A little less rattled then last night maybe, but I don't feel any different." Martha pushed off her covers. "You know you didn't have to come over last night, right?"

"I guess I'm a little more like Mum than I care to admit."

Martha leaned forward to hug Tish. "A little bit isn't that bad."

Tish noticed the skeletal hand sitting on Martha's dresser and got up to grab it. "What's this, then?"

Martha shrugged. "Just a piece of a broken skeleton model." She shook her head. "It's nothing."

"Well this could be _handy_," she smirked. "Like your own little Thing." Tish set the hand on the bed and maneuvered its fingers so that it appeared to be crawling up the comforter. "Whatcha think?"

Martha slapped her hand down on the skeleton hand. "Don't do that," she said nervously. "That's creepy. I should get rid of it." She grabbed the hand and walked over to the bathroom where she chucked it into the waste bin. "And, actually, I think I might to get out of here."

"Where do you want to go?"

"No, I mean, by myself. No offense."

Tish leaned back on the bed and shrugged. "None taken. I get it. Go have a little stroll, a little fresh air. Just make sure to take your cell with you."

"Yes, _Mum_."

"Now_ that's_ creepy."

After Tish left the room Martha quickly shed her night clothes for a pair of hip huggers, a swoop neck burgundy blouse, some high heeled boots, and a matching burgundy leather jacket. She loosely ran a brush through her hair and then pulled it up into a messy bun on the back of her head. After applying a thin layer of dark cherry lip gloss, she grabbed her purse – and cell phone – and headed for the front door. "I'm heading out now!" she hollered. But the moment she opened the door, she found a buzzing blue light in her face.

"What are you doing here?"

"_Me?"_ Martha glared. "I live here! What's _your_ excuse?" She suddenly snatched the wand from his hand. "And what is this thing? Some kind of burgle tool?"

"Hey!" The Doctor snapped. "Don't take other people's things!" He suddenly wedged his way into the apartment.

"I'll stop taking your things when you stop stalking me!" Martha grabbed The Doctor by the flap of his jacket. "Are you planning to blow up my flat now too?"

"Why would I do that?" he scoffed. "I got a signal." He tapped the wand. "But it must be the wrong one. You're not plastic, are you?" He knocked on Martha's forehead and shook her head. "No." He glared at his device. "What's wrong with you?"

"Funny, I keep wondering the same thing."

"Martha, is someone at the door?" Tish stepped out from the kitchen and stopped when she saw The Doctor. "Oh, _hello_." She raised an eyebrow in her sister's direction.

Martha shook her head. "Someone from _The Enquirer_. Give us…ten minutes."

Tish pursed her lips. "Maybe he could give me ten minutes after?" she winked and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Martha led her mystery man into the small room that served as her living room. "Now I want to know everything, I think you owe me at least that much." She pointed to the couch. "Now sit. And talk."

The Doctor plopped down on the couch. "Comfy." He ran his hand over the armest. "Leather. I like leather."

"I can tell," Martha frowned. "But I don't want to hear about my couch."

"You said 'everything.' Stream of consciousness, I assumed."

"Don't assume."

Martha took a seat in an overstuffed chair. "What happened last night at the school?"

"I told you, living–"

"Yeah, 'living plastic.' But what does that mean? How can plastic be living?"

Before The Doctor could answer, there was a tapping sound up the back of the couch. Suddenly the skeletal hand which had been thrown away appeared and launched off the back cushion and clamped around The Doctor's neck.

"Oh my god!" Martha gasped, jumping up. She grabbed the remote control from the glass coffee table and attempted to beat the skeletal hand off. Instead, it only got irritated and grabbed onto Martha's face instead. She held back a scream as its force shoved her against the wall and The Doctor desperately attempted to pull it off. She could feel the bony fingers digging into her skin and making her eyes water. Finally, when she felt the hard plastic fingers begin to break the flesh, The Doctor tore it from her face and waved his wand at it, clicking his button on the side as if he were searching for the right setting.

"There!" he announced proudly. "I've cut off the signal." He tossed the hand at Martha. "H_armless_."

"Very funny," Martha retorted sarcastically. "Signal to _what_? I thought you took care of that on the roof?"

"That was only one signal. It's like taking the batteries out of your phone, it stops the phone from working but you'd have to disconnect the satellite to bring down all phones."

"So where's the proverbial satellite?"

"I'm still working on that." The Doctor headed for the front door.

"I'll help you then."

"No," he said, opening the door. "You won't."

"I will and I am. You shouldn't have blown up my school and then shown up again at my front door if you didn't want my help." She followed him out the door and chased him down several flights of stairs as he skillfully tried to avoid her questions. "Do you want me to go to the police?"

"What would that do?"

"Get people killed, you said so yourself."

"Is that supposed to scare me? Because _you_ were the one who refused to let anyone die last night. I know you wouldn't do so now."

Martha crossed her arms. "Fine. But I won't leave you alone until you're straight with me."

"I believe that," he chuckled. The Doctor stopped suddenly and turned to Martha. He examined her face and then touched her cheek with his thumb. "It cut you," he said, wiping away a smear of blood.

"I – hadn't noticed."

"Look, last night I was taking care of a very bad thing. This morning I was tracking the plastic and the plastic was tracking me. You were just an accident, you got in the way. It," he said, holding up the skeleton hand, "reactivated this morning in your flat because it thought you might lead it to me. But now I've neutralized it, so you can go off on your merry little way."

"And who's to stop it from reactivating again?"

"I'm taking it with me, so that won't be a problem again. Safe and sound, see?"

Martha shook her head. "I don't believe you. There's more to it than that, but you seem to think I'm too thick to understand."

"You're human."

"And you're not?"

"Nope. Neither is the plastic."

"Really?" she said skeptically. "Then what are you?"

"A long way from home."

"All right, so say for a moment that I accept that. Humans have withstood a lot, so what makes you think I can't handle this?"

The Doctor studied her. "Okay, Martha. This," he said, waving the skeleton hand, "or rather, the being controlling it, wants to take over the human race."

"And they're taking over med school mannequins to do it? What good does that do? Scare off a generation of people from turning into doctors and saving lives?"

"Not just med school mannequins, _all_ mannequins, all over the world."

"Okay…"

"Do you believe me?"

"Maybe."

"Well you're still listening, that's something."

"I am. So explain: who are you?"

"I told you: I'm The Doctor."

Martha shook her head. "No. You have to _earn_ that title."

The Doctor stepped in front of her, stared her down, but Martha didn't flinch. "It's like when you're a kid, the first time that they tell you that the Earth's turning and you just can't quite believe it 'cause everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it." He grabbed Martha's hand.

His hand gripped around hers made Martha feel weightless, somehow, like she was suspended in a dream and everything was revolving around her. It was intoxicating, like a narcotics induced high.

"The turn of the Earth; the ground beneath our feet, spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurdling around the sun at sixty-seven-thousand miles an hour. I can feel it. We are falling through space, you and me…clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And if we let go…" He released her hand.

Martha closed her eyes, suddenly experiencing a feeling of vertigo.

"That's who I am. Now, forget me. Go home." He used the skeleton finger to point back the way they'd come from and then turned and walked across the street.

Martha touched her forehead, still feeling dizzy and woozy, as though she'd drunken too much at the pub the night before. She closed her eyes, hoping for the feeling to subside. It started to, but then she heard a noise, a whirring-whooshing sound that she'd never heard before, and she opened her eyes but saw bubbling black spots in her vision, the way someone with low blood pressure might if they stood up too fast. Within the blurs she thought she saw a blue box across the street, in the general direction in which The Doctor had headed, but her vision was still too fuzzy to make it out. When it cleared she saw no sign of The Doctor anywhere. Or the blue box.


	3. Chapter Three

**A/N: **Merry Clara!

_**Martha**_

**Chapter Three**

_Doctor?_

Martha stared at the word in her search box. She didn't bother to click the search tab, it was too vague. She needed something more direct, but what? She rubbed her forehead and sipped on a mug of chamomile that Tish had made her.

_The Doctor and living plastic?_

And the search came back instantly, but the results had nothing to do with the man she'd seen. The top links referenced a man called Dr. Rhenborg and his so-called living plastic creations. Artwork, she guessed. Or possibly some kind of top-of-the-line medical technology that she had yet to hear of, which seemed unlikely. Either way, it wasn't of use to her. As she racked her brain, she suddenly remembered the glimpse of the blue box, the one she wasn't sure had even been there in the first place.

_The Doctor and the blue box?_

This time the first link that came back had promise: _Doctor Who?_ That was certainly the question she wanted answered, so she clicked on the link and it brought up a mint colored page with a black and white photograph. Everything in the photograph had been blurred out except one face: the face of The Doctor. Below, a message in bold type read: _Have you seen this man?_ Below that was a contact link for someone referred to only as _Clive_. With nothing else to work with, Martha clicked the link.

An hour later Martha found herself parked in front of the house of a man who called himself Clive Finch. She didn't know much about him, other than he had a wife and two kids. She tapped on the steering wheel, wondering if she should've brought Tish with her or not. "Not," she finally said. "Tish doesn't need to be involved. Not yet." Martha climbed out and knocked on the front door. A moment later a boy answered, probably somewhere between fourteen and fifteen. "Hi," she smiled. "You must be Clive's son? I'm here to see him."

"Dad!" the boy hollered, uninterested. "It's one of your nutters!"

Martha smiled awkwardly as the boy wandered away from the door. Moments later a hulking man approached with a friendly smile. "Hi, Clive?"

"And you must be Martha."

Martha offered her hand. "Nice to meet you, Clive. Good name," she remarked. "Same as my dad's."

"Oh, thank you," Clive nodded. "Named after my father, actually."

"Who is it?" a woman's voice called from upstairs.

"Oh, uh, something to do with The Doctor!" Clive called back. "She's been reading the website." Clive turned back to Martha. "Please come in, I'm back in the shed."

"'She'?" the woman's voice asked, followed by footsteps down the stairs. "She's been reading the website? She's a 'she'?"

Martha waved politely as Clive ushered her down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door into the shed. It was cramped and smelt of dust and hot oil. She waved her hand, swirling the dust in the air around that shine in the shreds of light from the covered windows; she nearly sneezed.

"A lot of this stuff's quite sensitive, I couldn't just send it to ya. People might intercept, if ya know what I mean. If you dig deep enough, and keep a lively mind, this 'Doctor' keeps cropping up all over the place: political diaries, conspiracy theories, even ghost stories. No first name, no last name, just 'The Doctor.' Always, 'The Doctor.' And the title seems to be passed down from father to son, it appears to be an inheritance. That's your Doctor there, isn't it?" Clive asked, pointing to his website pulled up on his computer screen.

"Yeah," Martha agreed.

"I tracked it down to the Washington Public Archive just last year. The online photo's enhanced, but if we look at the original…" He pulled a handful of photos from a plastic bag and began to hold them up for Martha. He pointed out The Doctor's face, which was already circled in red Sharpie with arrows pointing to it. He had three of the same photo, but each one was zoomed in a little more. When he showed her the final one he explained, "November the twenty-second, nineteen-sixty-three."

"The assassination of President Kennedy," Martha interrupted, even before Clive's hand trailed down to the picture of the President and his wife in their fateful motorcade. "His father?" she asked aloud.

"Going further back: April nineteen-twelve. This is a photograph of the Daniels family of Southampton. 'And friend.'" He held up another photograph, this time of The Doctor in Edwardian clothing.

"He's identical," Martha gawked. "I know genetics can be a little crazy – I've got a cousin that looks almost identical to me – but this is insane!"

Clive nodded. "This was taken the day before they were to sail to the new world on the Titanic. For some unknown reason they cancelled the trip and survived. Uh, and here we are," he said, reached for a plastic bag pinned to the wall. He shook out a hand drawing. "Eighteen-eighty-three, another Doctor!" He flashed the picture at Martha.

What struck her the most was that, not only did the drawing look identical to the photos, but that this one also wore identical clothing to_ her _Doctor. "That's impossible." Then she recalled The Doctor's claim: an alien. She gingerly touched the pulse on her wrist, it had sped up considerably.

"This one washed up on the coast of Sumatra, the very night that Krakatoa exploded. The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he's there. He brings a storm in his wake and he has one constant companion."

"Who?"

"Death."

Martha flinched and the thick silence of the hot shed air was interrupted by the buzz of her cellular. She held up a single finger. "Excuse me a moment."

"Yes, of course," Clive smiled.

Martha stepped outside the shed, back into the daylight and soft breeze. She felt the wispy hairs from her messy updo tickle the back of her neck as she checked her caller I.D. "Tish?"

"Hello, Martha."

Martha frowned. "Hey…uh, are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"You just…sound a little off, that's all."

"We should meet for lunch, let's meet for lunch!"

Martha blinked and checked her watch. She was surprised to discover how long she'd been out. "Uh, yeah, sorry, I didn't realize I'd been gone so long. Has Mum called again?"

"Pizza! I want pizza!"

"O-kay," Martha laughed. "Pizza, then. You want to meet at Gandolfo's?"

"Gandolfo's."

"Yeah, you remember, it's around the corner from–" But before she could finish, the call went dead. Martha stared at her phone. She had a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she didn't have enough information to understand why yet. She tried to shake herself off and reentered the shed. "I'm sorry, that was my sister, she wanted to meet up for lunch."

Clive nodded understandingly. "I suppose our time's up then?" He laughed jovially. "Well, you know where to find me if you need to know anything else. And I'll put you on my mailing list too, in case I find out anything else we should meet about," he promised.

"I'd appreciate that." Martha followed the man back through the house and smiled at his wife as she was leaving. The visit had only left her with more questions than answers, all of which she pondered over and over on her drive to Gandolfo's. When she arrived she was surprised to find that Tish was already there, but before she even reached the table, she noticed that her sister looked bizarre. Her hair and makeup seemed…_strange_, almost as though it had been painted on like a Barbie doll's. "Tish?"

"Sister! Sis. Sissy." Tish exclaimed, her mouth shaping into a disturbingly wide grin.

"You must be hungry. Or gearing up to ask me for money, I can't decide which." Martha slid into the seat opposite her sister and tried not to let onto the fact that she was staring at her. "Trying something new with your makeup?"

"What?" Tish asked distractedly. "Where have you been?"

Martha stared at a glass of ice water on the table. "I, uh, just went to meet up with someone."

"_Who?"_

"No one," Martha evaded. "Just somebody I met online. Not like an Internet date or anything like that. And _don't_ go telling Mum! You know she'd just freak out."

"What did he say?" Tish pressed.

"'He'?" she asked, recalling Clive's wife's reaction to her. "Look at you, always assuming the worst. Could've been a she."

"What did _he_ say?" Tish's voice gleamed with a near steel edge. Then, in literally a blink, she forced out a fat smile. "You can tell me, sister. Sis. Sissy. Tell me! Tell me!"

"What's gotten into you?" Martha asked, narrowing her eyes.

"One cheese pizza!"

"We haven't even ordered yet," Martha snapped without looking up.

"Tell me!" Tish yelled, suddenly slamming her fist on the table. "Tell me about The Doctor!"

Martha suddenly sat ramrod straight in her chair. "I never told you about The Doctor."

Tish smiled big again. "Oops?" She grabbed Martha's hand, pinning her to the table. "I need to find out how much he knows, so tell me where he is!"

"Doesn't anybody want this pizza?"

Suddenly Martha gasped, recognizing the voice. She inwardly cursed herself for not having done so sooner. Nay, immediately. She looked up at the same time Tish did and found The Doctor standing at her side, holding a medium sized pizza tray with a single cheese pizza and the pizza slicer on it.

"Ah, gotcha!" Tish grinned.

"Why don't we just cut to the chase?" The Doctor winked. He grabbed the pizza cutter off the tray and threw it at Tish.

The pizza cutter smacked into Tish's forehead in time with Martha's horrified gasp and then her forehead wiggled, absorbing the pizza cutter. Suddenly she held up her hand and a rippling moved down her throat, over her shoulder, across her arm, and then the blade of the pizza cutter emerged through her palm until she was holding the handle. "Cut your losses, Doctor?" She lunched at The Doctor, slashing with the pizza cutter.

The Doctor flipped the pizza tray over, catching the blade of the knife on it like a sword against a shield. He then shoved back, knocking Tish on her bum, and grabbed Martha by the hand to pull her off her chair.

Tish's arm suddenly expanded into a rubbery looking pizza handle and she smashed it down on the table, breaking it in two.

Shouts rang out across the restaurant as The Doctor lunged at Tish, grabbing her in a headlock. He twisted her head until it popped off in his hands and then stepped back, staring at her glaring face in his hands.

"Don't think that's going to stop me!" Behind The Doctor, Tish's headless body began to run blindly around the room, bashing and smashing anything it could find.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Martha ran to the fire alarm and yanked it down. "Everyone out!" she hollered. _"Run!"_

The Doctor motioned to Martha to follow him through the kitchen and out the back door into the alley. Once out he threw his weight against the door and began to wave his silver wand up and down against the frame.

"What are you doing?" Martha demanded. "Come on!"

"You want it to follow us?" The Doctor snapped in return.

Martha whirled around, about to fire off another reply when she saw a large blue Police Call Box standing in the open alley. She blinked a couple times, recalling the glimpse she thought she saw of it earlier in the day. But she didn't have time to dwell on it, because the pounding on the door became louder. She ran to a chained gate and pulled on it. "We're trapped."

"Nah," The Doctor said dismissively. He pulled out a key from his inner pocket and stuck it into the lock on the blue box.

"In there?" Martha echoed incredulously.

"Stay out, come in, it's your choice," The Doctor said before disappearing through the doors.

Martha watched the indents in the door growing larger. She finally pushed through the door and stopped halfway up a metal ramp as the door shut behind her. Inside, it was like a whole other world. "Is this some kind of optical illusion?"

"You tell me."

"It's bigger on the inside!"

The Doctor stood at the console, hooking Tish's head up to some wires. "I hadn't noticed."

"Is there a – a crew or something?"

"Just me. Now, shut up a minute." The Doctor waved his wand over Tish's head. Or the thing that had been pretending to be Tish. "You see, the arm was too simple," he announced. "But a head's perfect. I can use it to trace the signal back to the original source." He laid the head down on the console and spun around to face Martha. "Right! Where d'you want to start?"

Martha looked around. "You weren't lying when you said you were an alien."

"Right."

"So…what kind of alien?"

"Time Lord."

"Time Lord?" Martha laughed in spite of herself. "Well, that's not pompous at all." She suddenly waved her arm around as if she were holding a marker. "That little wand thing, with the blue light, what's that?"

"This?" The Doctor said, producing the object in question. At Martha's nod he explained, "A sonic screwdriver. It uses sonic waves to screw and unscrew things. It started out as a convenience, but as with most technology, it's advanced a lot since then."

"So that's what you did out there? You used it to kind of…screw the door in place? _Without_ screws?"

"Lock it," The Doctor said flatly. "Yes." The Doctor motioned his arm in a wide arc. "This is called the TARDIS. T-A-R-D-I-S. It stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space."

"So it's a spaceship that looks like a wooden box?"

"A Police Box from the nineteen-fifties."

"Right," Martha whispered. Suddenly she gasped and her hand flew to her mouth in revulsion.

"Culture shock," The Doctor concluded. "That's all right, it happens to the best of us."

Martha ran up the remainder of the ramp and shoved The Doctor out of the way. She began to try and pick up the melting globs of the rubber Tish-shaped head. "Tish?" she rasped. "Tish!"

"No!" The Doctor yelped. "No, no, no, no!"

"What's happened to her?" Martha demanded. "What happened to Tish?"

But The Doctor was running around the console, too busy pulling levers and pushing buttons to pay attention to her. "The signal's fading!" He seemed to be talking more to himself than to her. "Wait, no, there – there!" The machine beneath their feet began to shake and whir. "No, no, no, no, no, no! Oh, no! Almost there, almost there!" he yelled, lifting his hands towards the ceiling. "Here we go!"

Martha suddenly flew around the console, catching The Doctor off guard. She grabbed him by the flaps of his jacket and thrust him up against the railing of the ship. Bits of melted Tish were rubbing off on his clothes. "No!" she shouted. "You are not going anywhere until you tell me what's happened to my sister!"

"I – I don't know," he sputtered, genuinely shocked by her abrasive course of action.

"My sister is a melting blob of rubber and you don't know? You _tore off her head_ and _you don't know_?"

"This," he said, wiping a bit of the melted rubber off his jacket, "isn't your sister. She's a copy!"

"Yes, I thought as much about that when you threw a pizza cutter into her forehead!"

"So why are you chastising me about pulling off her head if you'd already worked out the details?"

"Because now that head is melting! Is it like in the sci-fi shows, when the copy dies it means the real person has died too? Is my sister dead?"

"I don't know."

"Then what bloody good are you?!"


	4. Chapter Four

**A/N: **So it looks like after this chapter, there will only be an epilogue left. ;)

_**Martha**_

**Chapter Four**

"I should've trusted my first instinct, you're just like the others! Stupid little human girl, you think your one sister is more important than every other stupid ape on this planet! I'm trying to save the lot of you, but no, you're too easily distracted with saving one instead of the whole!"

"You've never had siblings, have you?" Martha shot back, releasing her hold on him. "You just don't get it. Family means nothing to you, _Time Lord_."

The Doctor raised his finger, his face turning scarlet, but instead he took off down the ramp and out the door.

Martha looked down at her hands, then at the melted blob of Tish on the console. She wiped her hands together until the last bits of rubber peeled off, falling to the floor of the TARDIS, and then bounded down the console after the alien.

"I've lost the signal!" The Doctor shouted with his arms waving in the arm. He pointed contemptuously to Martha. "This is your fault!" He began to pace the sidewalk. "How can you hide something that big in a city this small?" he asked, more to himself than to Martha.

Despite her rage, The Doctor's words were getting to her: saving Tish or saving the planet. She wanted to be a doctor, after all, and she knew where the greater good lied. "Hide what?" she asked carefully.

"The transmitter," The Doctor snapped. "The Nestene Consciousness is controlling every piece of plastic in London, so it needs a transmitter to boost the signal.

"What does it look like?"

"Like a transmitter!" he said, emphasizing the alleged obviousness of his statement with his hands. "Round and massive, somewhere slap-bang in the middle of London! A huge metal circular structure."

Martha crossed her arms. "You're thicker than I am."

"Excuse me?"

"A massive round circle in the middle of London?"

"Yes."

Martha grabbed his hand and yanked him over to the bridge. "Ever played I Spy?"

"No."

"Well you're about to start: I spy with my little…" She grabbed The Doctor by the chin and directed his attention across the river. "…London Eye."

The Doctor's jaw loosened in her hand, falling open halfway. He looked to Martha and pointed like a child. "The London Eye."

"The London Eye," Martha nodded.

"Fantastic!" And he took off running.

Martha charged after him, keeping pace. She briefly wondered why they didn't just use his bigger-on-the-inside spaceship, but was quickly distracted when he reached out to grab her hand as they ran. She wasn't even out of breath by the time they thudded down the stairs at the end of the bridge, she was too exhilarated to be winded.

"Think of it: plastic, all over the world, every artificial thing waiting to come alive. The med school mannequins, the shop window dummies, the phones, the wires, the cables…"

"Prosthetic limbs, IUDs, tampons…"

The Doctor released her hand. "Now, we've found the transmitter, so the Nestene Consciousness must be somewhere underneath."

Martha followed a low humming sound to the side of the bridge and peered over the edge. It was coming from some dirty metal boxes with nearby cranks. "What about those?"

The Doctor joined her side. "Looks good to me!"

Martha led the way down to the cranks and began to turn them with The Doctor's help until they opened to reveal a steamy red lit underground, with a rusty metal ladder. "Here goes nothing!" She hopped onto the ladder and crawled down until she had to jump off and was soon joined by The Doctor who'd done the same. As they started to make their way through the underground, Martha asked, "When we find this 'living plastic,' what do we do? How do we stop it?"

The Doctor grinned and retrieved a glass vial filled with blue liquid. "Anti-plastic."

"Anti-plastic," Martha murmured and shrugged. "I guess that's the least extraordinary thing I've heard today."

A few minutes later they arrived in a corridor and when Martha looked over the edge, she could see a glowing ooze of golden-red liquid. "The living plastic?"

"Yes."

Martha followed The Doctor down a few more flights of stairs until he stopped and took up residence against a metal railing, directly facing the molten ooze.

"I seek audience with the Nestene Consciousness under peaceful contract, according to convention fifteen of the Shadow Proclamation!" As if in response, the blob began to undulate. "Thank you! If I might have permission to approach?"

As Martha began to approach him, she noticed a quiver of movement in the corner of her eye. She began to move around to get a better look and then realized that the movement had been caused by Tish, who was huddled in a ball behind a lower railing. "Tish! Tish!" She ran down the railings until she reached her sister and enveloped the young woman in a frantic hug. "It's okay, Tish, I've got you, you're safe!"

"That – that _thing_ down there, Martha," Tish sputtered. "What is it? How did I get here?!"

The Doctor descended the stairs to where Martha and Tish were huddled. He looked over Tish and rolled his eyes.

"She's alive," Martha breathed, kissing Tish's head.

"Obviously." The Doctor bent down and examined Tish, who stared back at him warily. "That was always a possibility: keep her alive to maintain the copy."

"You knew that and you never said?" Martha snapped.

"Can we keep the domestics outside? Thank you." The Doctor glared.

Tish pointed. "Wh – who is that?" She shook her head. "You said he was a reporter. Martha, w – what's going on?"

The Doctor walked down to the platform above the blob. "Am I addressing the Consciousness?" He waited for it to rise up into some sort of vaguely demonic shape and then proceeded: "If I might observe, you infiltrated this civilization by means of warp shunt technology. So, may I suggest, with the greatest of respect, that you shunt off?"

The Consciousness seemed to crinkle up, growl, and even spit bits of molten rubber into the air.

"Oh, don't give me that! This is an invasion, plain and simple. Don't talk about 'constitutional rights'!" At the Consciousness's increased agitation and what could only be described as shrieking, The Doctor raised his voice: _"I. Am. Talking!" _He gave a calculated pause and then added, "This planet is only just starting. These stupid little people have only just learned how to walk, but they're capable of so much more. So I am asking you, on their behalf: please, just go."

Martha heard a familiar scraping noise and then gripped the railing as she saw a musclular anatomical mannequin and a skeleton walk up behind The Doctor. "Doctor!"

But her warning had come too late, because the anatomical mannequin secured The Doctor's arms behind his back and the skeleton then reached into his inner pocket and retrieved the anti-plastic. The Doctor shook his head. "That was just insurance!" he said. "I wasn't really going to use it!"

The Consciousness spat and screamed, rising from its vat like a fist.

"I was _not_ attacking you!" The Doctor pleaded. "I am here to help! I'm not your enemy, I swear, I'm not!"

Tish grabbed onto Martha's leg. "We need to get out of here!" she pleaded.

"What do you mean?" The Doctor said, his eyes wide at the creature's screams. Above, metal chambers opened to reveal the TARDIS. "Oh, no. No, no, no! Yes, that's my ship but–" He was interrupted again by the shrill sounds of the Consciousness. "I should know!" he protested. "I was there! I fought in that war, but it wasn't my fault! I couldn't save your world; I couldn't save _any_ of them!"

"What's it doing?" Martha yelled over the sound of the creatures thrashing.

"It's the TARDIS! The Nestene's identified it as superior technology. It's terrified, it's going to the final phase! It's starting the invasion. Get out, Martha! Just leg it: _now!_"

Thick chords of blue lightning began to arc from the vat. They struck randomly several times, blowing up walls and crates, then they began to mobilize, striking purposefully at the stairs. The stairs – the escape route from which Martha had come down to find Tish – flared and collapsed into a pile of sparking metal and dust plumes.

Martha gripped the edge of the railing, leaning so far over she thought even a little breeze might push her over all the way. Everything inside her was telling her to run, but she couldn't just leave The Doctor down there.

On the other hand, there was Tish to think about, who again pulled at Martha's leg. "We're trapped!"

They could hear a pulsating sound above their heads and Martha assumed it was the transmitter in full swing. She envisioned her brother, Leo, and his pregnant girlfriend, Shonara, out baby shopping and being attacked by baby dolls wielding knives like in those _Chuckie_ movies Leo liked so much. Then she imagined her dad and his new girlfriend, Annalise, getting attacked by store dummies while Annalise was dragging him around Queen's Arcade for new clothes. Finally, she pictured her mum at the airport, fresh off her plane and passing the mini McDonald's restaurant, unaware that the large Ronald McDonald statue that always stood out front with a painted smile on its face was now scowling and ready to murder her.

Suddenly Martha whipped her head around to look down at her elder sister, arms hugging her calf as if she were a wee child. "Leg it," she repeated, her eyes lighting up as bright as the blue bolt that was beaming into the ceiling. "Doctor, leg it!"

The Doctor seemed at a loss. He was struggling against the powerful muscular mannequin to no avail. He cast a pleading look up at Martha, obviously realizing there was no way for her to get out.

"Leg it!" Martha yelled again. She pointed to the skeleton holding the anti-plastic. "It's fibula!" she cried. "The thinner outside bone on the lower section of the right leg, kick it as hard as you can!"

The Doctor's eyes grew wide and he suddenly flung out his leg with as much force as he could muster. It connected with the fibula of the skeleton and a resounding crack was heard.

The force of the break caused the skeleton to shudder and shake off balance and finally plummet forward. The anti-plastic flew from the skeleton's fingers as they both went crashing into the sloshing vat. The Consciousness seemed to bubble and froth, screaming with such intensity that Martha and Tish had to throw their hands over their ears. The pulsating noise above the ceiling dimmed away shortly thereafter.

About the same time, the anatomical mannequin holding The Doctor ceased to move and The Doctor quickly fought his way out of its frozen rubber grips. Within minutes he'd run back over the platform, up a flight of stairs that lead to Martha and Tish which hadn't been caved in, and ushered them both over to his TARDIS. He quickly twisted the key into the little golden lock and the three of them piled inside.

Martha embraced her sister, but kept curious eyes on The Doctor as he danced around the TARDIS console, flicking levers and buttons in some kind of one alien parade. The ship lurched beneath them and Martha felt Tish's muscles contract. "It's okay," she promised. "This is a ship and it's just moving."

Tish shook her head, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. "What's going on Martha? How do you know this man? And – and how can any of this be r-real?"

Martha wiped Tish's face with her thumbs. "I don't really understand it all myself," she admitted. "But this man…he's The Doctor. He's – he's…complicated." The movement beneath their feet stopped and Martha assumed they'd landed again. She urged Tish up and walked her over to the doors. When she pushed them open, she found that they had landed in an alley that opened up onto a street corner. Martha's cell phone began to vibrate in her pocket.

Mere seconds later Tish's cell phone began to go off as well, but the latter was too stunned by being in the alleyway to be able to answer it. She looked back at the thing that she'd stepped out of and realized it was a large blue box. When she'd initially stepped inside of it, she'd only seen the front door and had assumed they'd walked into a new room. But now she realized it was just a box. Gaping, she broke away from Martha and walked around the box until she got back to the doors. She was nearly ready to look inside again when The Doctor popped out.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" The Doctor asked, looking at Martha as she held her vibrating phone in her palm.

"It's my brother," Martha said, "but I don't know what to say."

The Doctor smiled. "Tell 'im you were fantastic!"

"Well I guess I had to be, didn't I? You weren't any help back there. You'd be dead if it wasn't for me."

"Yes," The Doctor somberly agreed. "I would." He nodded. "Thank you."

"This is mad!" Tish exclaimed. "Even madder than all of Adeola's alien conspiracy theories!"

"And even after everything we just went through, you haven't stopped to think that maybe Adeola's conspiracies aren't just theories after all?" Martha pointed to The Doctor. "That man is not from our world, Tish. He's an alien! So was that creature in the vat."

Tish nodded slowly. "And that's what scares me out of my bloody mind, Martha. I take out the trash and then next thing I know I'm being sucked into the bin and I wake up on a staircase in front of this howling mass."

"I know it's a lot to take in–"

"You did not go through what I went through. You have no idea how I'm feeling right now!"

"No," Martha agreed. "I don't." She chanced a glance at The Doctor. "But we can talk about it." She moved to put an arm around Tish's shoulders, but the latter shrugged her off.

"No. No, don't touch me!" Tish threw up her arms and began to back away from both Martha and The Doctor. "Just stay away from me."

"He didn't do anything," Martha said. "He was trying to help. So was I!"

"He was trying to help?" Tish fired back. "Is that why you got so angry with him for not telling you about 'the copy,' whatever that meant?"

Martha deflated. "He was trying to save the world."

"But not necessarily me. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one who brought that thing here in the first place."

"Tish, wait!" Martha cried as her sister began to walk out of the alley.

"Let her go," The Doctor said.

Martha stopped halfway between The Doctor and Tish. She watched Tish disappear from the alley and looked back to The Doctor. "Is she right? About you bringing the Consciousness here?"

"I followed them here."

"But back there," Martha frowned. "Back there you said something about a war…that you destroyed its world…and yours."

The Doctor nodded. "I had no choice."

"Is that so? Or is that just what helps you sleep at night?"

The Doctor clasped his hands and looked down. "I don't sleep much."

Martha's phone began to vibrate again. She looked at it conflictedly. "It's my mum this time."

"Better answer it then."

"I wasn't going to tell them," Martha confided. "But Tish…I don't know what she's going to do and I can't stop her from telling our family about you."

The Doctor nodded. "You'll both have to do whatever you feel is right."

Martha pursed her lips. "Is that what you did in the war?"

The Doctor was silent for a time, then he stepped back into his TARDIS and forced a smile onto his face. "Right then!" he said. "I guess I'll be off." He angled his head. "Unless…"

"Unless?"

"Unless…I don't know," he shrugged. "You could come with me? This box isn't just a London hopper you know, it goes anywhere in the universe, free of charge."

"What?" Martha smirked. "Even Pluto?"

"Oh," The Doctor scoffed. "You don't want to go to Pluto, it's not even a planet."

"Not a planet?"

"Well," The Doctor said, glancing down at his wrist as if he wore an invisible watch, "it won't be come next year. Spoiler alert."

"So it's not just a spaceship, but a time machine too?"

The Doctor winked. "How'd you guess?"

"'Spoiler alert,'" she said, mimicking his voice. "And Sumatra, the Titanic, JFK, and right now. I presume there're others. 'Sides, I've seen _Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure_. It's like you copied them."

"Oi!" The Doctor barked. "John Wiggins copied me! Bloody Wiggins." He pushed open the other door. "So, you coming Martha Jones?"

"I never told you my last name."

"Time machine."

"So what else do you know about me then?"

"That you want to come with me. I can see it in your eyes."

"Do I?"

"You tell me."

Martha closed her eyes. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Tish, for one. And the rest of my family, my exams…"

"Time machine," he reiterated.

Martha smiled sadly. "Semantics. You might be able to take me away for years and bring me back minutes after I left and nobody'll be the wiser. But I'll know. _I_ will know that I left Tish after everything she's just been through; I will know I ignored my family when they called to make sure I was all right. I can't, Doctor. I'm sorry, but I can't. Maybe another time," she said halfheartedly.

The Doctor nodded. "I may just have to take you up on that."

Martha nodded without offering him anymore words. She watched as he ducked back into the TARDIS and shut the door, but the box didn't go anywhere. She suspected he was waiting for her to change her mind, but that wasn't going to happen, so she turned her back and took a few steps forward. She kept taking them until she'd found her way out of the alley and then she heard a whirring, whooshing sound and felt a breeze tickle the hairs on her neck. When the noise was gone, she waited a while, then ventured back down the alley to make sure the box was gone. As she suspected, the TARDIS was nowhere in sight. Martha quickly collected herself and left the alley in search of her sister.


	5. Epilogue

**A/N: **Thanks for reading!

_**Martha**_

**Epilogue**

"Distal row: trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, and hamate!" Julia said, pointing to a shot glass for each hand bone that she mentioned.

"Don't forget the metacarpal bones," Martha smirked. She pulled a drink tray towards her and picked off the final three shots. "Extending in three distinct phalanges: proximal, middle, and distal!"

Julia picked up one of her shots and clinked it against Martha's. "Bottom's up!"

Martha threw her head back and swallowed the shot in a single gulp. As soon as she set the shot glass on the table, she picked up another and downed that too. She repeated the same process with the third glass and then took a break to watch Julia down a fourth.

"Looks like you're gettin' a little woozy over there, Oliver. You all right?"

Oliver pushed out of the booth, quivering like a Palm Tree. "More shots!" he announced before wobbling towards the bar.

"I'm a little worried about him," Julia confided in their peer's absence. "I think he was putting them down before we got here."

Martha nodded sympathetically. "Ever since Rita disappeared…" She pressed her lips into a tight line, thinking back to that day nearly a month earlier when she'd met The Doctor on the ninth floor of her med school; it was the same night of the fire and the night Rita Afzal had vanished. Some believed she perished in the fire, but her remains had never been found. "He took it pretty hard."

"He'd been gearing up to ask her out."

Martha nodded as Oliver stumbled back to the table and plopped three shots down, sloshing out nearly half of each one. He grabbed one of the glasses and held it into the air, spilling more. "Piss up!"

"You want to call the cab or should I?" Julia whispered.

"I was going to take a cab home anyway," Martha replied in a hush. "He can come with me, I'll eat the cost." She slid out of the booth to stand beside Oliver, just in case he ended up toppling over.

Julia followed her friend's lead, taking up a position on Oliver's opposite side. She held up her glass. "To the end of second term!"

"To the end of second term!" Martha agreed, clinking her glass against Julia's.

Oliver muttered something unintelligible and banged his glass against Martha's and Julia's, spilling what remained in his shot. He didn't seem to notice, however, and sloppily pressed the glass to his lips.

Martha quickly downed her drink and set the empty glass on the table. "Whoa, there!" She caught Oliver by the shoulder and braced her arm against his back to keep her upright.

Oliver's arm slumped around Martha's shoulders. He smiled loosely at her, all the while tangling his fingers into her hair. "You hoov neace air," he slurred. "Ri-tah had neeeace air shoo."

Julia patted Oliver on the back. "Come on, Ollie. We're gonna get you home." She positioned Oliver's other arm over her shoulders and assisted Martha in walking him out to her car.

"Good thing he hasn't got plans tomorrow, because he's going to wake up feeling like a house fell on top of him." Martha held their friend upright while Julia hailed a cab. "You going with us?"

"I think I'm going to stay and have another drink or two."

"You're sure?"

"Hey, I'm a girl who can hold my liquor, Miss Martha Jones. You should know." She winked. "Besides, I think I saw a cute lady watching me over at the bar earlier and I'd like to know if she's still there."

Martha chuckled as a cab pulled up to the curb. She nudged Oliver into the backseat. "Good luck with that," she said, giving Julia a parting hug. "Let me know what happens."

"I don't kiss and tell," Julia joked. She bent down and peeked into the back of the cab. "'Night, Oliver!"

Martha ducked into the backseat next to her plastered friend and shut the door. She watched to make sure Julia got back into the club safely.

"Where to?"

It was a North accent, but not just any North accent: "Doctor!" She leaned forward and caught The Doctor's face in the reflection of the rearview mirror. "What are you doing here?"

"It looks like I'm driving home a slobbery mess, doesn't it?"

"So, what? You're space stalking me now?"

"Time stalking, if you can call it 'stalking.' You humans are so predictable." He pulled onto the road. "Congratulations, by the way."

"On what?"

"Acing your exams."

"No spoiler alert this time?"

"It's not a spoiler when you already knew you were going to do it. By the way, how's Tish?"

Martha allowed her head to incline, hiding a smile against her chest at the fact that he'd been considerate enough to remember. "Better," she admitted. "She was pretty upset with me there for a while, but I can't say I blame her. If I'd been in her place, I probably wouldn't have liked you much either. The good thing is that she hasn't told anyone. Probably because they'd think her mad. Most people seem to think that the mannequin attack was some kind of cybernetic meltdown. That's what the news media has been going with anyway, even if it's utter bollocks."

"UNIT PR," The Doctor scoffed.

"What?"

"Nothing."

The Doctor pulled into the Oliver's parking complex and took a spot at the far end corner. He opened the back left door and yanked the bumbling young man out.

"Oi! Be careful with him!" Martha scampered out behind Oliver. She raised her index finger. "And _don't_ throw him over your shoulder!"

The Doctor seemed ready to argue, but surprisingly acquiesced to her request.

"And I won't be the one cleaning up sick if you jostle him about too much."

"All right already!" he snorted.

"I suppose you've already looked up his flat number too?"

"You think the TARDIS can travel in time and space but she can't look up an address?"

"The TARDIS is a she now?"

"She's always been a she."

Martha smirked as they got up the staircase to Oliver's flat. She turned suddenly and jammed her hand into The Doctor's inner pocket. His bulging eyes made her laugh as she pulled out his sonic. "You Time Lords are so predictable." She pointed the sonic screwdriver at the door handle, but nothing happened.

"You broke it."

"I did not!"

The Doctor cracked a half-smile. "Point and think."

Martha tried again, this time waving the sonic back and forth over the handle. The node lit up and she pictured the levers inside the lock sliding apart in her mind's eye. The hum of the sonic continued until the locks clicked and then Martha twisted the handle and let the door swing open.

The Doctor snatched his sonic back and waved it in the darkness of the flat as they entered. The lights began to pop on as though they were motion activated, tunneling all the way back to Oliver's bedroom.

Martha halted just inside the doorframe. Standing beside Oliver's closet was the TARDIS, in all its wooden blue glory. "You parked your spaceship in my friend's bedroom?"

"He wasn't using it." The Doctor plopped Oliver into bed and dusted off his hands. "Now that that's taken care of, let's go."

"You're still on about that?" Martha pulled the covers up around her friend.

"You said another time. It_ is_ another time," he said, tapping his watchless wrist.

"Doctor–"

"You've just finished your exams and you said yourself that you've patched things up with your sister."

"Patching," Martha corrected. "It's a work in progress." She shook her head. "Why do you want me anyway? It's not the end of the world again, is it? Do you need me to save you?" she smirked.

"It's not the end of the world." The Doctor pushed the TARDIS door open. "But I could take you there."

"Get out."

"One trip," he offered. "Just to say thank you."

"You already did that." Martha took a step nearer towards the open door, her resolve collapsing like Jenga blocks. "_One _trip?"

"One trip."

"Well," Martha said, sauntering up to the door, "I guess if you went through the trouble of coming all the way across the universe just to ask me on a date, it'd probably bruise your ego if I refused, wouldn't it?"

"It's _not_ a date."

"For the record, I'm not remotely interested, I only go for humans." She quickly brushed past him into the TARDIS.

"Good!" The Doctor lingered in the doorway, watching Martha as she circled the console. He smiled discreetly and stepped inside, closing the door behind himself. Moments later a whirring, whooshing sound filled Oliver's bedroom and the TARDIS disappeared, leaving only fluttering med school notes in her wake.


End file.
